Scientific and Social Judgments of Safety in the Nuclear Fuel Waste Management and Disposal Concept

Abstract

In February 1998, the environmental assessment panel for Atomic Energy of Canada's (AECL) nuclear fuel waste management and disposal concept issued its report, in which it concluded that the idea of burying nuclear waste deep in the Canadian Shield is not acceptable as it stands, because it has not been demonstrated to have broad public support.1 The report offers an intriguing analysis of the concept of safety, according to which there are two perspectives one can take to evaluate whether a project is safe, a technical perspective and a social perspective. According to this analysis, the proposal for burying nuclear waste in the Canadian Shield could be judged to be safe from one perspective, but not from the other. In fact, the panel concluded that burying nuclear waste in rock is safe from a technical point of view, but that it has not been shown to be safe from a social point of view, for which reason it found the project to be unaccept able at this time. In this paper I explore the analysis of the concept of safety that led the panel to adopt this curious conclusion. I argue that the panel's analysis represents an advance over many such discussions, because it legitimizes the understanding of the concept of safety held by the general public, which is based on the idea of protection from harm. However, I conclude that the analysis ultimately fails because it does not